Search

What? Who? Why?

If you’ve clicked on this link you no doubt wish to know who I am, what I’m doing, and what qualifies me to do it.

I’m Malcolm Craig, Senior Lecturer in History at Liverpool John Moores University. I’m formerly a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh. My current research – generously funded by a Visiting Fellowship at the British Library’s Eccles Centre for North American Studies – focuses on the ways in which the American and British governments of the 1980s attempted to manipulate public understanding of secret intelligence and nuclear issues, and the ways in which the media reacted to this. I’m also researching the origins and persistent of the “Islamic bomb” meme in the Western media up to the present day. My previous research has been published in Cold War History,The International History Review, andIntelligence and National Security(see below for publications list). My first book, which examines American and British nuclear non-proliferation policy towards Pakistan from 1974 to 1981, was published Palgrave Macmillan in mid-2017. I also co-host the American History Too! podcast with my friend and colleague Mark McLay.

My commentary on American history, nuclear proliferation, and international relations has appeared in a variety of outlets. I’ve been a talking head on the BBC, France 24, Sky News, and a number of other TV and radio broadcasters. I’ve also written for The Conversation and penned an op-ed for the Washington Post’s ‘Made by History‘ column.

I returned to academic life in 2008, having graduated with a BA (Hons) in History & Sociology from Glasgow Caledonian University sometime in the mid-90s (longer ago than I really care to remember.) After spending the best part of a decade working in marketing communications (which instilled in me a healthy sense of self loathing), I travelled the world and then in late 2008, ended up fulfiling my ambition of doing postgraduate work in history.

I did my MA thesis at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, on the the (lengthy title approaching) topic “The Truman Administration and the Non-use of the Atomic Bomb During the Korean War, June 1950 to January 1953.” I must have done something right, because my subsequent application to study for my Ph.D at Edinburgh was accepted.

My PhD project examined the UK-US axis and what motivated approaches to nuclear proliferation in the developing world during the 1970s. Mores specifically, I use Pakistan as a case study in an attempt to understand how cultural factors such as religion impacted in foreign policy. My research was funded by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation and the Professor James F. McMillan Scholarship. My research also won the Edinburgh University Dalziel Prize for British History. I’m lucky enough to have been supervised by two fantastic scholars in the form of Dr Fabian Hilfrich and Dr Robert Mason, as well as being surrounded by many other excellent people.

David M. Watry, Diplomacy at the Brink: Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014), History, the Journal of the Historical Association, forthcoming